


Crack Shot

by RestAssured



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: And He Knows It, BAMF John, John Likes Dangerous Men, John Makes Poor Choices, John Screws The Bad Guy, M/M, Mary does not exist, Mycroft Knows All, Smut, Virgin Sherlock, ambiguous timeline, sort of a casefic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RestAssured/pseuds/RestAssured
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During an oppressive London heatwave, an old army friend of John's comes to town. The problem? He's a gun for hire. And he and John were never just friends. </p><p>Not beta'd or Britpicked. All mistakes are mine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sherlock is spreading butter on his toast in the most infuriating way possible. His knife… creates that cold scratching sound that comes from hard toast and too little butter. It’s all the way across the room and John can hear it. And he doesn’t know why he cares.

His shoulders tick. The knife scrapes.

“D’you—” He begins, clears his throat, and starts again. “Do you have a pen?” He asks, because it’s better than asking _Do you have to do that?_

The pen comes flying at the back of his skull, and he ducks, letting it fall to the wedge of space between his thigh and the chair. The scraping does not pick up again, and he opens his paper to reveal the Sudoku puzzle.

Sherlock is in a deadly mood. There are no cases. The majority of the moneyed set has left London for somewhere more comfortable, and those without much money are wandering through the streets aimlessly, clothes purposefully disheveled and caked with sweat. This heat wave has been going on for a week. It has made the tube maddening, and driven hundreds to the parks to lay about like strewn bodies on a battlefield. Reporters just barely kept their frustrations in check as they reported no end in sight. And the worst of it is Sherlock.

Sherlock is in a deadly mood, as previously stated, and that means that John is in a half-deadly mood himself. He has no reason to be, save for the heat and the fact that he knows the consulting detective is going to make his life miserable if he doesn’t get a case any time soon.

So he decides that he’s going to leave the Sudoku and take his laptop to the café down the block. Better air conditioning in there, and less likelihood of having rotting remains shoved into his face, or someone with an attitude dissecting his sleeping/eating/dating habits with the precision that he himself normally reserves for the use of his firearm.

“Where are you going? Off to the café, then?” Sherlock asks, not looking up at all when John’s paper crinkles between his fingers and the chair scraping the floor beneath his leverage. God, he’s infuriating sometimes when he knows everything already and feels the need to ask just to show off.

“Yes.” Confirmation appears to do nothing for the world’s greatest and only consulting detective. He does not move, his shoulders do not twitch, his hands do not interrupt their steady twisting of the dials on his microscope. John grabs his laptop from the table where it’s been resting since Sherlock stole it that morning. “Need anything from the store?”

“Milk. The jug with the closest expiration date, thanks.”

“Right.” Normally, John would ask _‘What for_ ’, because it gives his flatmate some perverse pleasure to tell him just how much of an idiot he is as he’s giving him the answer. But today, he is tired of all things Sherlock, especially his superior attitude. So the quicker he can slip out the door, the better.

He leaves, not really thinking much about the trouble one Sherlock Holmes could get into, if left unattended.

\--

The café was filled. Every table taken by a group of desperate people looking for air conditioning and willing to pay an extortionate price for iced coffee. It was luck that a couple left as John was coming in, and that luck came in the form of a high-top table and a pair of very uncomfortable looking plastic stools. It turned out that they were just as uncomfortable as they looked, but the cool air and lack of Sherlock was worth it.

According to the internet, his blog on the world’s greatest—only—consulting detective was one of the top ten most followed in the country. His email filled up with hundreds of messages every week, and he’d created such a buzz that it was honestly hard for Sherlock to leave the apartment anymore without the paparazzi blatantly tailing his every move. It was thrilling and horrifying and satisfying—because while Sherlock (apparently) refused to read his (so called) “little blog”, everyone else did. And it moved people. It moved people to… like Sherlock. Which was not an easy thing by any stretch.

His coffee arrived moments into his first paragraph concerning the case of that dead surgeon that was made to look like a car accident. With it, the waiter left a little tea cake with glaze that had a sickeningly sweet pink color to it. Frowning a little, he looked up. “I didn’t order this.”

“No, eh, the gentleman in the cap over there…”

Raising his eyebrows, John turns his head, almost expecting to see Sherlock. After all, it would be just like him to follow him out when he just wants to get away. Pest that he is. But Sherlock would never wear that cap of his without anyone forcing him to, so it’s not too surprising to see that he’s wrong. There by the bar, waiting for a cup, is a man in a baseball cap. He looks like a right yank, but when he turns his eyes to John and grins that boyish grin he always had going for him, it takes quite a lot to keep from gasping out loud.

He finds himself blown back in his chair by the sight of him, slowly. His body seems to react to the shock in a recoil that takes a moment to fully commence. His shoulders fall back, and then the rest of him, settling against the chair in an odd parody of relaxation he always seems to fall into when he knows things are about to get dangerous.

The man grins warmly. He takes his flimsy paper cup in hand, striding over to the table where John is pretending to be surprised, bemused, and not at all horrified.

“Look at you, jumper and all…” The man slides into the chair across from John and visions of Hell dance in the back of John’s mind. Australian accent, smoke-weathered voice. He hadn’t been wrong. “Too domesticated, aren’t you? I thought Pimmy was takin’ a piss when he told me.”

“Garret.” John heard his voice and didn’t recognize it. “What in bloody _fuck_ are you doing in London?”

“It suits you.” Garret continued, his sharp green eyes examining him head to… well. “Actually, no. It doesn’t suit you at all. You look like somebody’s husband.”

“Answer the question.” John finds his hand slamming flat to the table in front of him. The tea cake jumps, and the glaze cracks like sugar paste. “London. Why?”

“For fun and money. Why else?” Garret chuckles, sounding pleased with himself. John seethes, watching him sit back in his chair, looking too happy. Fucking prick…

There’s silence. It takes over the table for a full minute as they stare at each other, a thousand words passing between them. Most of them are John’s.

_You bloody bastard, I told you I want nothing to do with you, how can you just show up here, don’t you realize what you’re doing to me, can’t you see that I’m not like you, I want no part in you, I don’t even want to see your blasted face…_

Six of them are Garret’s.

_I want to fuck you raw._

The minute passes, steam rises from John’s cup, and life goes on around them as if they are not even remotely important in the grand scheme of this café, let alone London.

John breaks the silence, his voice slightly shaky as he mutters low, graceless. “You—you can’t _be_ here.”

And Garret just looks at him, amused. His fingers drag over the table and trace the lines of the wood. Everything about them holds Watson’s attention, and he hates himself for that because he knows well the pattern they’re making is purely for his benefit.

“Go—go back to where you came from.” John tries, drawing his eyes away from those fingers after a long moment of sticking to them. “Please.”

“Why would I?” Garret asks, and pushes to his feet again. He touches John’s hand, just once, then leaves the table just like that. “We’ll be in touch, Captain. You can count on it.”

John watches him go, his hand curled into the tightest fist it has ever managed. An hour after Garret left him, he still hasn’t written a thing, and he knows he won’t.

\--

The door to their flat opens before John can find his keys, and Sherlock comes to a halt mid-stride, coat half-on in the doorway. There is a distinct silence as they catch their bearings together, John dropping his search for his keys and Sherlock shrugging his coat on the rest of the way as he looks him over intensely.

“Shooting.” Sherlock says simply, and strides past him toward the stairs. John gives up all hope for a peaceful moment and strides after him, following him down the steps.

“Twenty-eight year old female, Charlotte Kroy, daughter of software developer Michael T. Kroy. Aspiring actress, just a couple of voice-overs and a shampoo commercial. Shot in broad daylight, on her way home from her boyfriend’s. We’ll need cab fare, John, do you have it?” Turning to look over his shoulder at John, Sherlock eyes him intensely once again.

Raising his eyebrows, John pulls out his wallet and opens it. Sherlock stops, just outside 221B. Then keeps walking, turning back toward the cab he’d called not too long ago.

Once they both get into the cab and Sherlock gives their preferred location to the cabbie, silence reigns for several seconds. John turns his eyes to look out the window, as he usually does when Sherlock is quiet. Deductions are coming, and he knows it. Bracing himself never works.

“So, who did you meet at the café?” Sherlock finally asks, and John blusters out a sigh because he had been waiting for the question.

“Sherlock…” He begins, because he does not want to answer, and his tone is clear evidence of that. Of course, that means he’ll be enduring endless questions and deductions until he acquiesces to Sherlock’s brilliance or offers the information himself. Either way.

“Before you woke up this morning, peeked at your wallet—”

“ _Sherlock_ -!”

“—and inside, there was one five pound note and four twenty pound notes, along with your dry cleaning receipt and a condom—expired, by the way, threw it out, you’ll need another one. The condom, not the receipt. At any rate, there’s a bit of pink glaze beneath your right thumb nail.”

John blinks. He blinks again, waiting.

Sherlock sighs. “The café down the street sells its large coffee for a pound-eighty. You had two pounds in your pocket last night, and knowing how you hate loose change, you could’ve paid with that. But the glaze is from the lemon raspberry tea cake, which at three pounds should’ve forced you to break your five pound note. You have been watching your weight lately, and normally when you do indulge it is with warm flavors such as chocolate or caramel, nothing fruity, so I suspected you had not chosen the treat yourself, and another glance at the contents of your wallet confirmed it. So. Who bought you a raspberry lemon tea cake at the café down the street?”

There is nothing but silence for three good seconds. “An old army mate.” John finally answers, which isn’t exactly a lie. Garret _had_ been an old army buddy. Before he finished his tour and decided becoming a ‘private contractor’ was more lucrative than civilian life.

“S’an odd choice for an old army mate.” Sherlock broaches, more quietly than he normally would. And when John doesn’t answer, he continues, “The color, specifically. The bright pink color of the glaze. A mate would not buy something so flamboyantly pink for their mate unprompted unless he had a specific idea of said mate’s preference, and as we have already established, this mate had no idea at all when it comes to you.”

“Will you—Sherlock, can you for once _not_ examine every detail of my life? Christ, I’m allowed to have other mates, aren’t I?” Watson blustered, turning away again, his eyes sliding out toward passing London street.

“What would you need those for?” Sherlock says, amicably. Well, as amicably as this walking shark gets.

The cab pulls up a block away from the scene, and they get out to walk it. Resisting the urge to grumble as he pays the cab fare, he follows close behind Sherlock but not beside him, not tonight.

The scene is as grisly as expected. The body is there, sprawled out, looking very surprised. Like she’d just tripped on the sidewalk. But the back of her head is near caved in, and the world around her is a halo of her blood. John can’t say a word this time. The scene hits him in a way that takes him back to Afghanistan, hard and fast. His stomach churns.

“Large caliber, shot from a distance, most likely with the use of a very high-powered sniper rifle, such as—”

“An AW.” John finishes, because he knows it already. And when Sherlock looks at him, his eyes narrowed in rather bewildered suspicion, he answers it. “I know what a fifty caliber hole looks like, Sherlock.”

Still, the detective looks at him with that intense gaze. It’s such a look that he’s not sure what to do or say. He settles for going very quiet and letting him work.

“An AW50 would do the job, yes.” Sherlock murmurs. His eyes begin to scan the surrounding buildings, but John already knows where the shot came from. There are two buildings tall enough to provide the right shot without giving the shooter away. And only one of them fits the trajectory.

The Count Gibson Hotel.

_“You can count on it…”_

That bastard…

Sherlock’s eyes find the roof of the Count Gibson, and John tunes him out after that, mind already gone to war with the only man besides himself who could make that shot clean.

\--

Shaking Sherlock is not an easy task, especially during a case.

“John—honestly…” The consulting detective starts as John does not leave the cab when it arrives back at Baker Street. “Now is not the time to catch up with your ‘army mate’. And it’s rather obvious you don’t want to. Come on, there’s work to be done, and I need your expertise.”

“You don’t need me.” John says, trying on a smile for good measure. “You’ve got most of it worked out, yea? I won’t be more than a couple of hours—just call me if you have to go running after our man.”

“… Of course.” Sherlock says, his eyes narrowing slightly on John’s face, highly suspicious. But then, he always gets that way when it comes to John having a life beyond the chase.

He can’t know. He _can’t_.

The cab pulls away, John still inside, and he wishes desperately he could find an excuse to bring his gun.

He lets it drive him around the block so that he can ensure that Sherlock isn’t following. That’s the last thing he needs. After the precaution is taken, he gets out at the very café he’d walked to that morning. There, waiting inside with a cup of tea, is Garret.

He no longer has the baseball cap. A sick feeling curls in the pit of John’s stomach. He stands outside, and Garret looks up, grinning like he’d known he would come.

He leaves his cup at the table and walks outside. They fall in step, and John grits his teeth, fighting all worlds until he can be sure they are not to be overheard.

\--

In the end, there are no words at all.

They reach a hotel, a nondescript place that caters to the American tourist Garret is apparently pretending to be. They walk up a flight of stairs, turn a corner, and enter a hotel room marked 203.

John opens his mouth to call him any one of a thousand things he’d thought up along the way, but Garret does not let a sound escape. He pushes in, their lips collide, and quite suddenly the words are fizzling out of John’s brain. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is not pleased with his deductions, and John realizes something at the worst possible time.

The deductions were the easy part. It’s coping with them that requires his brother’s services.

Sherlock paces the flat, running over the details over and over in his mind. An army mate who buys lemon raspberry tea cake. One who is more important than a case. One who required John to come around in the evening, one that John didn’t really want to see but was going to see anyway.

Sherlock paces faster. He pulls at his own curls.

John Watson has never been with a man. But clearly, he has.

Mycroft’s car pulls up, and Baker Street gets a little darker. Mycroft has a tendency of bringing down Sherlock’s mood with his mere presence alone. But he is the only one on this planet with the mind to match his own and the means to turn speculation into action. Of course, Sherlock could’ve followed. But if he followed, it would undoubtedly do more harm than good.

John Watson is sleeping with a man. A man he doesn’t want to sleep with.

Measured steps of sharp, Italian-made shoes a half-size too tight are invading the apartment. Mycroft, alone. Just as he’d demanded, thank God. Dropping onto the couch with his usual dramatics, he curls up on his side and contemplates the wall, folding himself into one huddled mass. It's the position he falls into when he's thinking glum thoughts.

“I see we’re brooding.” Mycroft says from the doorway, his hand pulling the door shut behind him.

“Not brooding. Contemplating.” Sherlock retorts, his mouth forming a sneer. “Did you put a tracker on John’s phone?”

“Don’t be stupid- of course I did.” Pulling out his phone, Mycroft proceeds to send a text. “Why? Don’t know where he is?”

“Yes and no.” Sherlock announces, springing up from his place. His brother is asking nonsense questions. So, back to pacing. “He’s with a man at a hotel, fucking. I just don’t know which hotel.”

Mycroft’s eyebrows rise to their maximum height—the height signifying great shock or feigned shock. “And you let him go?”

Sherlock feels like snarling. Instead, he uses bitter words and a sharp tone reminiscent of their mother’s scolding. “I didn’t _let_ him go—he just _went_. He has yet to answer my texts. Do you have a trace on his phone or not?”

“I’m waiting for my assistant to text the location, Sherlock. Be patient.”

“ _Don’t_ tell me to be patient—”

“For God’s sake, at least now you know he plays that way. At least now you have proof.” Rolling his eyes, Mycroft sets his phone on the coffee table, knowing that the minute it vibrates Sherlock will snatch it. “I had no idea sociopaths could be so possessive of their—”

“Finish that sentence, Mycroft. I dare you.” Sherlock scowls, his fists tight.

Mycroft’s eyebrows take on a decidedly condescending tilt, and Sherlock decides to stop looking at them. Mycroft is well aware of the fact that Sherlock has paid more attention to Dr. John H. Watson than any single human being on this planet, dead or alive, and that attention has _nothing_ to do with his marksmanship, post-traumatic stress, or psychosomatic limp. And everything to do with their little pocket of thrill-seeking contentment.

Damn him for caring, anyway.

“The look on your face is decidedly not sociopathic, by the way. I think you’ll need a new self-diagnosis.” Mycroft breaks the silence, unable to resist the jibe.

Sherlock seriously considers busting his lip. But that would be base behavior, and most-likely result in his brother injecting him with the sedative he conceals on his person at all times—which would wreak havoc on his deductive abilities, and he does _not_ have time for that right now. Instead, he resorts to playing blasé. “I’ve accepted my feelings for John are, in fact, feelings. Really, Mycroft, don’t be petty.”

“If we’re not being petty, then you won’t want to find out where he is.” Mycroft points out—damn him.

“Of course I need to find out where he is.” Sherlock snaps, sounding more than annoyed. “I practically throw myself at him in the most obvious way, every day, and he goes out of his way to duck, and yet he’s out there right now, cock-deep in—”

“Sherlock, I’ve told you more than once that your ‘obvious’ is not quite everyone else’s. When he comes back, perhaps you could be more—”

“I’m not waiting for him to come back.” Sherlock growls. His fingers twist at the hem of his shirt.

Mycroft’s eyebrows make another shape—one Sherlock is deeply familiar with—and he decides to pretend that they don’t exist.

“Sherlock, forcibly kidnapping your flatmate is both illegal and tabloid-worthy. Do I really need to remind you—”

“Mycroft, it’s either I go get him, or I bloody—”

The phone vibrates before the argument can escalate, and Sherlock lunges for it. There it is, in a pixelated light. A text, an address, a hotel name, a room number.

Mycroft’s people are very good.

Sweeping on a dark coat that he always wears, yet no one ever recognizes, Sherlock tosses the phone to his brother and heads for the door. “Coming?”

Mycroft is already behind him.

\--

The black cab takes them to a hotel on the far end of Soho, an affordable tourist magnet with a spotty cleaning service and free breakfasts. The sort of place a family would check into, not a single man with money to burn. Just staring at the smudges on the revolving door, Sherlock is imagining John’s hands on the brass push bar, standing close enough to share a precious slice of space with the man he’s come to…

Well, they’re _fucking_ now. No use getting jealous over _that_.

But the thought… John’s back against his chest, the man’s breath against John’s ear… There’s no use pretending either. He’s pushing through that revolving door and heading toward the nearest stairwell before his brother is out of the cab.

Every step he takes, he can hear John’s breath. Hot, tense, releasing uncontrolled noise against his mind’s ear. It’s lovely and all, but if that’s what he hears when he gets to that door, he’s going to kick it open.

Instead, he reaches the room number they’d been given and hears… crying.

A child. Crying.

He steps back, confused and appalled. And then the door opens, and a man in a horridly stained shirt is carrying a child who appears to be about two years old and covered in chocolate.

“It’s alright, we’ll just go find mummy and get the rest of our things—” The man pauses when he realizes that there are two very tall, very imposing men flanking his doorway. “Oh. How may I…?”

Sherlock’s lips set themselves in a hard line. Behind him, Mycroft takes out his phone and hits ‘call’.

From the depths of a bright blue unzipped tote bag sitting on the heinously unclean sofa comes the chirping ring of John’s mobile.

Brushing past the man and child, Sherlock heads into the room and reaches into the tote. The man behind him sputters, and Mycroft gives him a stern look, holding him in place until Sherlock digs out that damnable phone and squeezes it so tight that the plastic nearly breaks.

\--

Two floors down and eight rooms over, Garret is lazily tracing the scar on John’s shoulder with his tongue, making him shudder and roll, making his body recoil against the very nature of him. The nature of a man who finds beauty in pain. His hands grip at the stiff sheets, and the man above him drags him into his chest as if he’s all his to pull and squeeze. It’s comfortable and stifling all at once.

There is more than one reason for John to fear for his life right now.

This silence has stretched in wet, fizzling contentment since the second their hips stopped moving and their lungs emptied of air. The room is cold, fogging up the windows and making sheets imperative. John’s ass is sore in a way it hasn’t been in a long time, and he isn’t disgusted by the feeling.

He’s always claimed he isn’t gay. The truth is, he’s not willing to be gay. If he’s gay, then he’s in love with this soulless bastard—and frankly, if he’s in love with Garret, he might as well shoot himself and get it over with now.

He’d always assumed Garret was a fluke of the heart.

But these days…

“Get on a plane.” He says, his voice rough with exhaustion, with remorse. He can’t begin to regret this until Garret is done touching him and halfway to the airport. So he’d better get him there now.

Garret’s lips are closer to his ear than he’d originally thought. The word is whispered cool and soft enough to give him a chill. “No.”

“Get on a plane.” He says it again, a little harder, his body starting to turn in the strong arms that caged him.

“No.” Garret says again, meeting his eyes with an intent sort of look, his mouth somewhere between a smile and a hard line.

“I’m serious.” Watson tries, his hands pressing at Garret’s shoulders, slowly trying to wedge himself away.

“Are you coming with me?”

“No.”

“Then, no.” Garret says again, his hands sliding down to the small of John’s back, pulling him just as close as he was. “I’ve got a job to finish. And you’re my prize. So when you come with me, I’ll go.”

“Garret, allow me to make one thing absolutely clear to you: I am never, ever getting on a plane, train, coach or sidewalk with you again.” John says, trying to squirm away from Garret out of sheer frustration. “I’m telling you, you need to leave. You can’t… we can’t…”

“Married, then?” Garret asks, pulling him back and rolling him beneath him again, sick of yanking him back into bed. John finds his cheek pressed against his pillow.

“No, just…”

There’s silence. It’s long, and it makes John go very tense beneath the strength holding him down. The hands on his body are still, and then they’re not, pressing up his back and into his shoulders, pinching at the injured skin. Pain lances down his body.

“Another bloke.” He says it low, leaning down against John’s ear. “Another fucking bloke. Is that right?”

Inexplicably, Sherlock’s face flashes through his brain. His pulse kicks up like a horse just out of the gate. And there's seven seconds of stunned silence as the smell of smoke and tea invade his memory, opening the curtain for a smile that's always a smirk and eyes that are decidedly too blue for what they've seen and a voice that rubs deep and clear in his brain, not at all cracked by tact or cigarettes, saying _Of course there is, John, don't be an idiot_. 

And his mouth hisses “Yes". Because it's true. 

 


End file.
